With the thirty first anniversary of my
wrongful imprisonment just around the corner, I have been thinking a bit about
the Jury verdict and what that meant. I was not convicted on a unanimous
decision but by a 10:2 majority verdict, which is very important for a number
reasons and I would like to discuss two of these.
The first issue is that during my
Trial, the Court usher and others had noticed that one of the Jurors was seen to
be asleep on several occasions whilst witness evidence was being given. I clearly
recall that not only were his eyes closed but his head was tilted back, his
mouth was open and he was snoring quite audibly. The Juror next to him kept
nudging him to wake him up, though effective for a minute or two it wasn’t long before he started snoring
again.
On Friday 17th October prior to the commencement of proceedings, which coincidentally was the second day of my evidence, the usher brought this matter to the attention of Mr Arlidge the Prosecution QC who in turn informed the Judge. The fact that this issue had been officially reported should have led the Judge to dismiss this sleeping Juror member from continuing to serve. Geoffrey Rivlin, my Defence QC asked me if I wanted the Juror to be kicked out, but Rivlin’s advice to me was that the Juror should stay. I didn’t know the procedure nor the implications of this decision and so I did what I was advised to do. In hindsight that was a bad mistake because the last thirty years could have been so very different and I will explain why.
On Friday 17th October prior to the commencement of proceedings, which coincidentally was the second day of my evidence, the usher brought this matter to the attention of Mr Arlidge the Prosecution QC who in turn informed the Judge. The fact that this issue had been officially reported should have led the Judge to dismiss this sleeping Juror member from continuing to serve. Geoffrey Rivlin, my Defence QC asked me if I wanted the Juror to be kicked out, but Rivlin’s advice to me was that the Juror should stay. I didn’t know the procedure nor the implications of this decision and so I did what I was advised to do. In hindsight that was a bad mistake because the last thirty years could have been so very different and I will explain why.
As I have stated the Jury found me guilty
on a 10:2 majority verdict. The facts are that unfortunately we simply don’t
know whether the sleeping Juror was one of the ten who found me guilty or was
one of the two who concluded that I was not guilty. The chances of it being a Juror who found in
favour of a guilty verdict equates at 83.4%, there was a 50/50 possibility of
the sleeping Juror being one of the two who voted not guilty but as a
percentage of the twelve Jurors it works out at just an 8.3% chance. Looking at
these figures it would be reasonable to conclude that the sleeping Juror voted
guilty, had he been dismissed during the Trial then a 9:2 verdict would have
been returned and ultimately this would have resulted in an acquittal[1].
In the days when hanging was in
place, no man or woman was hanged if the Jury had reached a 10:2 majority
verdict, the Home Secretary of the day would commute the death penalty to a
prison sentence. In 1994 I was informed
that in 1988 Douglas Hurd the Home Secretary had changed the sentence, which
was set by the Judge at my Trial of twenty-five years to a whole life tariff. There
are currently around fifty prisoners serving a whole life tariff, only one it
seems, me, has had this sentence imposed even though I was convicted on a 10:2
majority and not a unanimous verdict. As a result this whole life tariff is in
effect a living death penalty yet history shows that I would not have been
sentenced to death before the death penalty was abolished.
Inheritance
The second issue is that whilst
considering their verdict the Jury asked a number of questions which were
directed to the Trial Judge. One was on certain specific aspects of the
forensic issues which had been given in evidence whilst a further question
concerned the issue of who would inherit my parent’s estate, with the Jury specificallyasking if the beneficiaries could be any of the prosecution witnesses. They were
told that certainly none of the prosecution witnesses would inherit any of the
estate belonging to my mum and dad. The conclusion reached at trial being that
no one had a clue who might inherit the estate.
On 3rd July 1986, some
months prior to my Trial the Will of my grandmother, Mabel Speakman was given Probate.
Her estate was valued at £70,963. However, gran had inherited all of mum and
dad’s estate prior to her death. Upon her death her estate, including that of
my parents, was inherited by her daughter, mum’s sister, Pamela Boutflour.
The Jury weren’t told that gran had
inherited my parent’s estate, or that this estate was settled prior to Trial
with Auntie Pam being the sole beneficiary. Had they been informed the Jury
might have had a very different view of certain prosecution witnesses and their
boasts to the Jury of huge wealth, when until July 1986 Pamela and Robert had
wealth amounting to just a few thousand pounds.
It seems reasonable to conclude that
Essex Police might have known of this issue and possibly proceeded to
investigate matters, and others involving allegations of fraud committed by my relatives. For example those later reported by the farm secretary Barbara
Wilson, but police conducted the investigation in a way that ensured findings
simply went nowhere. They stalled until
after my first Appeal 1988 and after a Court battle between other family
members fighting for their share of the family estate. And so the fraud case
dragged on over eight years and then was dropped with no action being taken.
Had the Jury known about how gran’s Will
was changed to exclude me, or that mum and dad’s estate had already been inherited
prior to Trial by some of the main Prosecution witnesses then their question to
the Judge asking who the beneficiaries were would not have been asked. Had the CPS known about this it would have
been unlikely that I would have gone to Trial, obviously certain witnesses and
their evidence would have been viewed as financially motivated. Sadly it seems
that the Court/the CPS and the Defence were all kept in the dark about the
money issue and misled about the actual forensics in my case.
Looking back
Now in 2016 after thirty one years in
jail and the numerous changing of the goal posts, I still cannot obtain
disclosure of key documents in this case including DCI Kenneally’s 6th
September 1985 report which stated as a conclusion that: “The evidence
indicates that Sheila was responsible”, a report written one month after the
tragedies.
On 8th September 1985 I was taken
into custody, on 13th September 1985 the D.P.P concluded that there was
insufficient evidence available to charge me with the murder of my family – I was
released from custody. Between 13th and 23rd September 1985 new evidence was
put before the D.P.P. and on the 26th September 1985 it was decided that I
could be charged with five counts of murder.
On 29th September 1985 I was
re-arrested and charged with murder x 5 and I have been in custody ever since.
What would the Jury think now after so much evidence has been unearthed
considering the troubling questions they put to the Trial Judge?
In any event, how can it be right to
give a man a whole life tariff to a person convicted on a 10:2 majority verdict
with a Jury member having fallen asleep during proceedings and given a whole
life tariff when the Trial Judge stated my sentence was set at 25 years.
So on this thirtieth year of my
wrongful conviction it is extremely saddening to realise that had aspects of
the Trial been handled correctly and the truth told it would have seen such a very
different outcome for me. The fact that the Jury were misled on key points of
evidence, and only eleven of the twelve jurors were actually paying attention
to the evidence and not falling asleep is so hugely important. Had the verdict
been 9:2 which seems probable I would have left the Court on the 28th
October 1986 quite rightly as a free man.
Jeremy
[1] http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1974/23/section/17
: “Subject to subsections (3) and (4) below, the verdict of a jury in
proceedings in the Crown Court or the High Court need not be unanimous if—
(a)in a case where there are not less than eleven
jurors, ten of them agree on the verdict; and
(b)in a case where there are ten jurors, nine of them
agree on the verdict”.
